African Elephant

African elephants are the world’s largest land animals. They are slightly larger than Asian elephants and can be identified by their larger ears that look somewhat like the continent of Africa. They will live in almost any habitat that provides plentiful food and water. They have longer pregnancies than almost any other mammal, carrying their calves for 22 months.

Elephants have the best sense of smell of all animals and their sense of smell is probably the most important of all their senses. The trunk gives these animals the ability to perform a range of functions from picking up a small coin from a flat surface to lifting objects that weigh over 250 kilograms. In 1996 Rasmussen and Munger studied the trunks and found that they are packed with nerve endings making them the most sensitive tissue ever studied.